Post Project 59: Elektorized Lego LED

June 11, 2015 | 11:37

Post Project 59: Elektorized Lego LED

Lego has never been more popular, it was even elected 2015’s World’s Most Powerful Brand. Though not a brand, LEDs (light emitting diodes) enjoy similar popularity. It made us wonder what happens when you cross Lego with LEDs? The World’s Most Popular Lego brick? (is everything that starts with “LE” highly successful?) We decided to give it a try.

By Clemens Valens (Elektor.Labs)

Lego™ has never been more popular, it was even elected 2015’s World’s Most Powerful Brand. Though not a brand, LEDs (light emitting diodes) enjoy similar popularity. It made us wonder what happens when you cross Lego with LEDs? The World’s Most Popular Lego brick? (is everything that starts with “LE” highly successful?) We decided to give it a try.

Lego compatible LEDs have been around for a number of years, but they are costly. Admittedly, those dedicated LEDs integrate better with Lego than our little PCB, but they are hard to customize. The elektorized version by contrast is adaptability itself, electronically, see the humble schematic in Figure 1.Don't miss any project, take out a free membership to Elektor.POST now!

Figure 1. Although the schematic indicates two LEDs in parallel, only one should be fitted. The parts labeled LED1, LED2 actually represent different LED footprints on the circuit board.